Whilst all of the Jewish State is totally
focused on the fate of three young Israeli boys, here are some recent news
items that illustrate the importance that the Jewish State places on its
children and youth.

Statistics published by the National
Library to mark annual Hebrew Book Week shows that children's
literature is a thriving sector, with 879 new books published last
year.Education standards in Israeli
schools are also improving and for the first time, the European Foundation for
Quality Management recognized
four Israeli schools for implementing its Excellence Model for
organizational management.

Today’s curriculum isn’t restricted to
reading, writing and arithmetic. For example, 700 children from 18 Israeli
middle schools took part in Israel’s “Youth, Water & Knowledge” program and
competition to help prepare the next
generation of Israeli water experts.First prize went to the Israeli-Arab Al Mutanabi school of Kfar
Manda.Children’s education also isn’t
confined to the classroom. At the Mini
Maker Fair at the Bloomfield Science Museum in Jerusalem, children were
encouraged to build robots, games and 3D products in 3D printers, all using new
technology. Half a million Israeli children receive after-school environmental
education to promote the collection, sorting and recycling of plastic
bottles.

Israeli students are bringing home more
prizes than ever. Israeli 12th graders returned from the 2014 Asian Physics
Olympiad in Singapore with five medals and three honorable
mentions.Meanwhile, pupils from Ilan
Ramon Youth Physics Center in Beer-Sheva won their 45th prize in the "First
Step to Nobel Prize in Physics" competition.Israel has won the most prizes of all
countries, since the US-based competition began in 2007.

Israeli children often “make a difference”
before they have even left school.A
group of 13-year-olds from the Harel School in Lod has made a breakthrough that
can help developing countries, by filtering
water, using ground pieces of rubber made from scrap tires.And a tiny 840 grams satellite designed by a
group of Israeli high school students at the Herzliya Science Center was successfully
launched in Russia.Duchifat 1
will help
locate lost travelers in areas with no cell phone reception.

Many of Israel’s innovations are aimed at
helping children.Israel’s Andromeda
Biotech was doing so well in the Phase III trials of its DiaPep277 therapy for Type
1 (juvenile) diabetes that it was bought by US pharmaceutical company
Hyperion.Israel’s Tal Sagie recently
launched Therapee
- the world’s first online interactive program for treating enuresis
(bedwetting). Tal and his father Jacob at their clinics have already cured
27,000 children of the problem.Meanwhile, Israeli industrial designer Yoav Mazar has developed the Doona
– for those families with infants that want to avoid packing the car with both
a car seat and a stroller / buggy.

The Jewish Agency for Israel held a camp
for 100
children (Jews and Arabs) from southern Israel whose lives have been
affected by rocket fire from Gaza and by other terror attacks.And for ten years, the Middle East
Education through Technology (MEET) program has been uniting budding young
hi-tech Palestinian
Arab and Israeli entrepreneurs. Palestinian Arab anesthesiologist Wafiq
Othman, however, told one of the most moving recent stories. Israeli doctors at
Save A Child’s Heart (SACH) saved
his younger brother’s life and inspired Wafiq to train with SACH.

I’ll conclude by mentioning some programs
that give opportunities for young people from overseas to see the Startup
Nation for themselves.Firstly,
Israel’s Big Idea
Summer Camp will teach new technologies to children aged between 7 and
18 from 30 countries.Israel’s Technion
has two programs for students from the USA. TeAMS
(Technion American Medical School) in Haifa trains students to a standard high
enough for the top US medical centers and University hospitals.And the Technion’s latest exchange program
with the University
of Connecticut promotes joint research into new energy technologies.

Finally, there were over 13,000 submissions
to the “My
Family Story” competition for the best 3-D Art representation of their
family history.42 youngsters won a
trip to Israel and will have their entries displayed at Tel Aviv University’s
Beit Hatfutsot Museum of the Jewish People.

The media often uses major sporting events,
such as the current FIFA 2014 soccer World Cup, to provide audiences with a
little light relief from the seemingly endless stream of bad-news stories.In contrast, I present you with a blog of
positive news featuring some of the recent achievements of the Jewish State’s
world-class team.

I’ll begin, however, with the tournament
currently taking place in Brazil.Israel’s world-leading Unmanned Air Vehicles and cameras were
demonstrated simultaneously in the skies above Rio de Janeiro. A Heron UAV made
by Israel Aerospace Industries, fitted with a heat-sensing camera from Israel’s
Elbit Systems helped Brazilian police capture
a criminal gang leader, to prevent violence during the World Cup.The Brazilian Air Force is also deploying Elbit’s
own UAVs in the shape of the Hermes 450 and 900, which are conducting safety
and security missions during World Cup matches.

Back on the ground, Israel’s global
dominance in security systems is in evidence at the 44,000-seat
Arena Patanal World Cup stadium in Cuiaba where Israel’s Risco Group
has implemented a command and control system.In another city, administrators serving 24 Brazilian Government agencies
will operate the Situator incident
management platform from Israel’s NICE Systems.

The flawed United Nations still performs
some useful global functions.It
distributes satellite images to rescuers in disaster areas, and will now be
enhanced with those from Israeli
satellites.The UN, together
with the World Health Organization, also backed Israeli NGO Wheelchairs of
Hope, designers of the world’s
first affordable, child-friendly wheelchair.(The video of the Israeli charity is in Arabic with English
subtitles.)

Israel’s cup is truly running over, due to
the water technology that it brings to a parched world.California is currently experiencing a
drought of near Biblical proportions and has turned
to Israel to help hydrate its economy.Trade journal Global
Water Intelligence bestowed its top awards on Israel’s IDE Technologies
in recognition of its water desalination plants at Carlsbad in San Diego,
California and at Soreq in Israel.In
Mexico, Israel’s Desalitech is installing its Closed Circuit
Desalination Reverse Osmosis technology.Israel’s Blue I Water Technologies is installing high-precision water
quality analyzers in
Beijing, China and also in
India and Paraguay.Israel’s
Mapal Green Energy has now been selected to install its wastewater treatment
systems, by three of the largest UK
water companies serving nearly half the homes in England.

Israel is a world power in renewable
energy.Israel’s Sunflower plans to
construct up to five wind farmsin
Finland.Israel’s Ormat
Technologies will soon be generating geothermal energy in Indonesia
and has had its 13th geothermal power plant inaugurated in New Zealand.

Israel’s
parliament building will soon be the most
environment-friendly law-making institution in the world, with 4,600 sq meters
of solar panels on its roof.Knesset
Director-General Ronen Plot paraphrased a Biblical verse "Out of Zion
shall go forth the law of green and renewable energy."

Finally, back to the soccer World Cup.Israelis have bought more
World Cup tickets per capita than any other country without a team in
Brazil.And Israeli soccer fans are not
even downhearted that their team didn’t qualify.Their attitude mirrors the ethos of the Jewish State that always
looks to the future and knows that things will get even better.Just the other week, for instance, Israel
came top of their qualifying group and for the first time ever will be heading
to the finals next month of the European under-19 Soccer Championships in
Hungary.

This is the second part of my review of
Israel’s achievements during the seven weeks I was absent from the blog
scene.If you missed the first part -
medical treatments - you can view it here.The recent Jewish festival of Shavuot
(Pentacost) showed us the proper way to treat those less fortunate than
us.There were many examples of that
principle in the Israeli news during those seven weeks.

The Palestinian Arab leadership has not won
many friends in Israel, but when individual Palestinian Arabs need medical
help, Israelis come running.That’s
just what 2nd Lt. Ben Tzanani and his IDF medical team did when they rushed to
save a one-month
old baby from the village of Beitin near Ramallah.The baby began to choke whilst her sister
was playing with her.Afterwards many
Beitin villagers phoned the division headquarters to express their
gratitude.

Doctors from “Save A Child’s Heart” have
treated over 1500 children from the Palestinian Authority, Gaza and neighboring
Arab countries at the Wolfson Medical Center in Holon.Supporting Jerusalem-based Christian
organization Shevet Achim recently wrote in detail about how much effort
Israeli doctors and medical staff exerted to keep one Iraqi baby alive.In total SACH doctors have repaired the
hearts of over 3300 children from over 45 developing countries since SACH was
founded in 1995.

Every week Israeli hospitals receive and
treat Syrians who have been injured in the never-ending Civil War that has
killed over 150,000 men, women and children.In just one example, two
severely wounded Syrians were transported to Israel and have been
hospitalized in the Ziv Medical Center’s trauma unit in the city of Tzfat.Saving Syrian lives won IDF paramedic Noga
Erez the President’s Award for Excellence for her outstanding service.What other nation would give one of
their highest honors to someone who saves the lives of people from a
country still technically at war with it?Back on the border with Syria, CNN’s Nic Robertson reported on the work
of Israeli doctors in the IDF field hospital on the Golan Heights.

In yet another conflict area, Israel
rescued several Ukrainians wounded in civil protests.But the high-profile case was that of Gennady Kernes, the Jewish
mayor of the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv who was shot and critically
injured.After being airlifted to
Israel, he eventually regained
consciousness in Haifa’s Rambam Medical Center having undergone two
major operations in Israel to treat the damage to his lungs, stomach,
liver and spine.

You might think that Israeli doctors would
be busy enough, yet Israel's chief pathologist, Dr. Chen Kugel, head of
Israel's Abu Kabir Institute of Forensic Medicine, somehow found time to advise
medical students at Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Slovakia on dealing
with terror victims.Meanwhile,
despite some unnecessarily nasty comments by the Turkish Prime Minister,
Israel’s emergency service Magen
David Adom offered assistance to the Turkish Red Crescent immediately
after the explosion and fire in a coalmine in the town of Soma that killed more
than 200 people.

I want to leave the medical arena briefly
to highlight some amazing Israelis whom even the Jewish State’s doctors cannot
(currently) restore to full strength.Firstly, Zohar Sharon, who won the ISPS HANDA World
Blind Golf Championship title for a fourth consecutive time.Sharon lost his sight during his army
service.And there can hardly be a dry
eye in the house for anyone watching this video of some very special
teenagers.For those that really want
to serve their country, the Jewish State leaves no stone unturned.

Finally we return again to the subject of
medicine.Israel’s Dr. Rania Okby is
excellent at her job as a specialist in maternal fetal medicine.But her true claim to fame is that she is
the first
female Arab Bedouin doctor in the world.And some people call Israel an Apartheid State!!